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On Thursday, Fulham Football Club announced they will be removing a giant statue of Michael Jackson that sits outside their west London stadium.s

The statute is an aesthetic atrocity. The UN should create an International Art Crime Tribunal and prosecute the man who erected it, former Fulham owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, to the fullest extent of the imaginary law.

Al Fayed never exactly explained why he’d put the thing up in the first place, beyond dubiously claiming that Jackson was a big fan of the team. Everyone hated it for every second of its two years in situ.

Now that it’s gone, no one cares.

Let’s agree that had it stood there for a hundred years — every bit as unsightly and pointless as it is now — the Jackson statue would have burrowed into the hearts of Fulham fans. Like a tick, or a pulmonary embolism.

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They’d have given it a cute name. They’d dress it up during Cup ties. Right now, they’d be chaining themselves to it.

That’s what tradition does — it obscures the truth of things.

Had the Washington NFL franchise come into existence only a couple of years ago, and then decided to call themselves the Redskins, that would have gone down rather less well than Fulham’s art perversion. They’d have been bulk-ordering pitchforks at D.C.-area Wal-Marts. People would be out in the streets.

But, you know . . . tradition.

The Redskins have been the ‘Redskins’ for 80 years. In fairness to D.C., they didn’t name the team. It was the Boston Redskins before it moved south into swampland.

For most of 60 years, there was no public debate about the name. Then Washington won the 1992 Super Bowl and people began to get surly.

That agitation has picked up steam lately, not that anyone really cares (because if you are not Native, and this matters a lot to you, you need to start volunteering with people who have real problems).

It’s picked up steam because it is exactly the sort of high-minded, low-brow clickbait that passes for philosophical discussion these days.

‘Is the Redskins name offensive?’ That’s a pretty short column. ‘Yes, because someone is demonstrably offended by it.’

ESPN’s Rick Reilly came staggering into the argument this week. Reilly defended the name, not because he feels strongly about the issue, but because he knows that a contrary take is guaranteed to get people frothing, then clicking, then disseminating. Mission accomplished.

As rationales go, there’s nothing with that, but let’s not drop down on our knees and begin eating dirt.

(And yes, this is being written in the full knowledge of what it is — the contrary contrary take.)

If you want to take a genuinely principled stand against prejudice in professional sports, you might find another line of work more in keeping with your notions of social justice. Instead, all involved want to take the Marie Antoinette route — making a good living off writing promo material for the oppressors, with a little PR flagellating on the side. We are none of us clean in this. The least we can do is admit it.

That said, the Reillys of the world are building an argument on that flimsiest excuse for poor taste — tradition.

‘They’ve always been the Redskins.’

Yes, and we used to burn witches at the stake, but somehow we managed to go on without that form of entertainment. There is no alchemical process by which a bad idea, having been done for a long time, eventually becomes a good idea.

There’s a lot of this sports-related volunteer blindness going around right now. This week, British Prime Minister David Cameron defended the right of Tottenham Hotspur supporters to use the word ‘Yid’ in chants. He did so not as the nation’s chief lawmaker, but as a sort of Head Fan. Were it being shouted in the streets, Cameron could not afford to come down on the side of a slur. But in the stands, you have to respect tradition. Or else.

As a white guy who doesn’t care about the Washington football team, I don’t feel the need to pick a side. Not my fight, and I won’t pretend to care who wins.

Instead, I try to apply the same simple rule to all differences of opinion. If something matters a whole lot to you, and not much to me, then I’m happy to let you have your way. That’s the notion that separates civilization from barbarism.

If Washington traditionalists are suggesting that their positive relationship to a team nickname is greater than a Native’s hurt at hearing it, then I wish they’d say that: ‘What I want matters more than what you want. So screw you and your hurt.’

That would be an authentic place to start this conversation. No one will say that, because everyone wants to both win the fight and also be seen as right while doing so.

As a visual point of reference, they might try to rethink this in terms of the Michael Jackson statue. The Redskins name is a talisman Washington fans didn’t choose, and likely something they would reject out of hand were it being suggested to them for the first time. Tearing it down costs them nothing.

If they are willing to accept that and keep fighting, odds are they will win, but they shouldn’t expect anyone to congratulate them for being right.

And let’s be honest — that appearance is the only thing anyone in this scrap cares about.

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